Eden Hill Journal

Comments, dreams, stories, and rantings from a middle-aged native of Maine living on a shoestring and a prayer in the woods of Maine. My portion of the family farm is to be known as Eden Hill Farm just because I want to call it that and because that's the closest thing to the truth that I could come up with. If you enjoy what I write, email me or make a comment. If you enjoy Eden Hill, come visit.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Page 8

On May 24 I posted about Global Warming and in particular about a chart on page 8 of JoNova's The Skeptic's Handbook. Today, someone appearing to be JoNova commented on my blog about that post. The comment was polite but lends little to expand upon that page 8 chart.So I did some Googling.First, here is my post and JoNova's comment on my blog. Now mind you I have a hard time convincing myself that important people in Perth Australia stay up at night reading my blog, so maybe someone is spoofing me or is serving as proxy for JoNova's effort. Be that as it may. I am, after all, a skeptic, aren't I?At her website, JoNova gives references for her Skeptic's Handbook.JoNova gives this reference as the source of the bar chart on Page 8 of her Skeptic's Handbook. The same chart appears as Figure 17 in this May 2007 presentation by David Archibald.Archibald references his own work copied here as the source of Figure 17 in the paper listed above. The very same chart appears in this paper as Figure 4. A stacked bar chart showing similar information is shown as Figure 11 in this Archibald paper.Archibald refers in his text concerning this chart to "the MODTRANS facility maintained by the University of Chicago" which appears to be this online calculator. Reference to this was found in comments here.An interesting rebuttal to Archibald's use of this calculator is given here by "david" who, it appears, may be Dave Archer who maintains the calculator - reference "Response" to response number 10 on this site.So the person responsible for maintaining this calculator used by Archibald and referenced by JoNova on Page 8 of her Skeptic's Handbook claims that Archibald is deriving incorrect (deceptive) data by using an unreasonably small conversion factor in the conversion from the calculator's results to temperature change. Archer claims the error to be a factor of 10. The point is that Archer's MODTRANS calculator does not predict the results that Archibald is plotting in this chart and then crediting to MODTRANS.So I'm thinking maybe I need to keep looking. Maybe this handbook isn't quite what it purports to be.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Skeptical about Common Sense

I've been a greenhouse gas believer for quite some time now. The logic of it seemed obvious to me. Greenhouse gasses capture heat from the sun. We are producing an ever increasing concentration of greenhouse gasses by fueling our industrial age with fossil fuels. Therefore we are putting gasses into the atmosphere that capture the sun's energy as heat and this is causing global warming. Makes good sense to me.Along comes a little graph in a little booklet from Australia and all of a sudden I'm a skeptic. I suppose I should test this graph before I believe it, but before I do that, I'll share this little booklet with you. The graph is a bar chart on page 8 and it titled "As Carbon Dioxide Increases it Has Less Warming Effect". Combined with the line graph on page 5 showing global temperature variation verses carbon dioxide concentration between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago derived from Greenland ice core samples, the graph on page 8 shakes the greenhouse effect argument right to the core. Yes carbon dioxide causes a greenhouse effect, but the effect significantly - logarithmically - decreases as concentrations of CO2 increase to the point where the increases we are seeing now are insignificant. I had been led to believe that the logarithmic effect was just the opposite of what this bar chart shows.So the pamphlet is called The Skeptic's Handbook. It is on a PDF file (2.72 MB).

Monday, May 11, 2009

All About Appearance

Here's an interesting article in Haaretz.com: Jerusalem worried over breakdown of U.S.-Israel cooperation under ObamaIn my view this is a hopeful sign, but with Israel you have to remember that everything public is all about appearances. The Mossad is always behind the scenes working out it's agenda secretly. But the American people last November chose to move our government to the left while since November Israel chose to create a humanitarian disaster and waged an atrocity-laced war, and followed that by taking a political turn further to the right in Israeli leadership. Perhaps now the Israeli people are beginning to see some political blowback for their chosen actions.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Bad Boy Bad Boy

I have been a bad boy.Let me explain...A few years ago someone found one of my email accounts and assumed I was somebody else, that I was the pastor of a church, their church. Recently I've been receiving emails from these people, I'll call them Betty and Ken for lack of a better name. Last week they sent me one that was a "Powerful wake up call" about how the Muslim population growth is going to take over the planet. America's fertility rate can't sustain our culture. Here's the YouTube video. Did you know that France will be an Islamic republic in just 39 years? America's fertility rate is 1.6Well anyway, this week they sent me an email about some movie due out this summer that portrays Jesus as a homosexual. Here are the contents of that message:*****The movie Corpus Christi is due to be released this June to> August.??> > This disgusting film set to appear in America later this> year and it depicts Jesus and his disciples as homosexuals!> As a play, this has already been in theatres for a while.> It's called Corpus Christi ' which means 'The> Body of Christ'.? ?It's a revolting mockery of our> Lord. But, we can make a difference. That's why I am> sending this e-mail to you. If you do send this around, we> may be able to prevent this film from showing in America and> South Africa .?> > Apparently, some regions in Europe have already banned the> film. We need a lot of prayers and a lot of e-mails.> > As a Christian I want to take a stand in what I believe in> and stop the mockery of Jesus Christ our Savior.?> > At the risk of a bit of inconvenience, I'm forwarding> this to all I think would appreciate it. Please help us> prevent such offenses against our Lord. It will take you> less than 2 minutes to pass it on.?> > ?If you are not interested,? or do not have the 2 Minutes> it will take to do this , please don't complain when God> does not have time for you, because He is far busier than we> are..?> > Remember, Jesus said 'Deny Me on earth and I'll> deny you before my Father'?> > > > > > > ?> > > > > > ?> > > > A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2> easy steps!*****Well for some reason I felt compelled to email Ken and Betty back. Here's what I wrote:*****Betty and Ken,After some brief research about the movie that your email claims will be released this summer, I discovered the probability that the the contents of your email were false. Bearing false witness is not only a sin, it is evidence that you are serving as an agent of Satan and as such, will not be spending eternity with God and Jesus and myself in Heaven. To confirm this, could you look into the truthfulness of this email which you sent me and if you find it to be false (as I have found), could you please issue me a sincere appology and ensure me that you will never do anything like this again?On the other hand, if this actually is a film coming out this summer, could you poosibly notify Snopes.com and have them correct thair error?Bill Walden*****I should have spell-checked it.Well Betty and Ken didn't like this email very much. They didn't apologize for it. Here is their reply:*****We cannot believe this was sent from you. Assuming that is was, this is my response. The only apology I owe you is that I forwarded an email to you. I did NOT believe that email, I thought, you as a Pastor would be interested in what is going around on the internet. I am not computer savvy and don’t even know what “Snopes” is. I have to say that your response was very unkind and hurt both me and Ken deeply. We took it as a personal attack. We have been faithful attendees at Cornerstone for 13 years, supporting your ministry and you don’t even know us, thinking that we are serving as agents of Satan! Unbelievable!!!! As of this email we will no longer be coming to Cornerstone. Ken and Betty [redacted]*****Well now, that is sad, isn't it? Betty and Ken were so hurt by Pastor Bill that they will no longer be attending or supporting Pastor Bill and his ministry. I felt moved, so I wrote this reply:*****Hahahahaaa!!!! That is hilarious!!!One suggestion, though. Give your pastor a call first.Sincerely,The other Bill Walden (?)LOLOh, and do your homework next time and figure out what Snopes.com is before you forward any more of these lies. God didn't give you a brain just to time your farts with.*****I am a bad, bad boy.